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The conscience has a logical (albeit reluctant) nature in Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan. They see it as a legal activity, which can break down. There were, however, other models of the conscience which could have been chosen by the three. This chapter looks at Catholic and Protestant meditations by Robert Southwell, Thomas Lodge, Henry Constable, William Alabaster, Nicholas Breton, and Gervase Markham. Their narrators, often in feminine form, exchange glances with God or melt into tears in front of him. They weep tears of penitence which appear to be as joyful as if no sin were involved. In...

The conscience has a logical (albeit reluctant) nature in Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan. They see it as a legal activity, which can break down. There were, however, other models of the conscience which could have been chosen by the three. This chapter looks at Catholic and Protestant meditations by Robert Southwell, Thomas Lodge, Henry Constable, William Alabaster, Nicholas Breton, and Gervase Markham. Their narrators, often in feminine form, exchange glances with God or melt into tears in front of him. They weep tears of penitence which appear to be as joyful as if no sin were involved. In them, the looked at and the looker change places in a ceaseless chiasmus of glances. By contrast, Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan rehearse their failure to weep and see, and so keep a space for themselves in any judgement in their actions. The conscience of these three poets remains verbal, judgemental, and dryly masculine.